With one of our developers and our Community Relations Manager off grazing greener pastures, the EverQuest II community has felt the tug of loss over this last month. Ryan "Blackguard" Shwayder has left big shoes to fill for sure, but even as we say goodbye to our beloved CM as he heads back to Colorado to start on new, real-life adventures, we want to never forget that before Blackguard was the CM, he was a gamer. Please sit down and take a moment with Savanja and Blackguard as they chit chat about gaming, EQII, and blogging!

No single event really inspired me to get into gaming as a career that I can recall. I've really just loved playing video games for my entire life, and started reading various books on game design and development in high school. I made a bunch of mods for various games as a hobby and ran fansites, which got me close to several developers. They all seemed to enjoy their jobs and I liked pretty much all of the devs I met, and the opportunity to work on EQII was timed well for me (and it was the right game) so I went ahead and took it. I've pretty much wanted to make games for as long as I can remember.